In every direction was a huge semi-irrigated desert valley. The roads at that point were high and we could see a long way. In the road was a large crater and a few yards away a tank was off to one side, burning. They had hit it again just a few minutes before we got there. German airmen had been after this crossroads all morning. We drove a couple of miles east along a highway to a crossroads which was the very heart center of our troops’ bivouacs. Shortly after lunch a young lieutenant dug up a spare jeep and said he’s take me on up to the front. We sat on the ground and ate some British crackers with jam and drank some hot tea. All morning I tried to get on up where the tanks were but there was no transportation left around the post and their communications were cut off at noontime. I spent the forenoon in the newly picked, badly shattered forward command post. Unfortunately, we didn’t kick hell out of them. 'But it won’t,' he said, 'for we are going to kick hell out of them today and we’ve got the stuff to do it with.'

The only danger, he said, would be one of being encircled and cut off if the battle should go against us.

He picked out a point close to the expected battle area and said that would be a good place for me to watch from. He took me into his tent and showed me just what the battle plan was for the day. On that morning I had a talk with the commanding general some ten miles behind the front lines before starting for the battle scene. It was the biggest tank battle fought so far in this part of the world.

The fight in question was the American counterattack on the second day of the battle at Sidi-Bou-Zid which eventually resulted in our withdrawal. Probably only Hollywood with its machinery of many dimensions is capable of transferring to your senses a clear impression of a tank battle. Neither can isolated camera shots tell you the story. will be an attempt to describe what a tank battle looks like. This is the first of several columns that Pyle wrote about a tank battle – this one telling the story of a U.S.

The first tank battle